Archive for April 15th, 2008
Posted by: in Politics News
Irvu writes “The US House of Representatives is considering HR. 5036, the ‘Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008,’ as introduced by Representative Rush Holt. The bill is scheduled for a floor vote later this day. It would provide for emergency paper ballots, money for the addition of voter verifiable paper ballots to existing systems, and post-election audits. Crucially, the change to paper is opt-in, making it possible for local jurisdictions to govern their own choices. Here are two summaries of the bill. It was reported out of committee with strong bipartisan support. As of this morning the White house has opposed the bill but not threatened a veto, and some previously supportive Republicans have now changed their tune. Calls might be made to your house rep (click on ‘Find your representative’). Here’s a sample support letter.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Filed under: International markets, Other issues, Bad news, Products and services, Industry, Consumer experience, China, Russia, Middle East, Scandals, Economic data, Politics, Oil, Israel
 As Joseph Lazzaro wrote earlier this day, oil prices were surging once again in today’s market, and traders set a new record, pushing prices up as high as $114.08 this day.
Fueling today’s rally were concerns over global supply, as news spread that Russian oil production has fallen this year. This is the first time in a decade that Russia is seeing a decline in its production.
Russia is not the only country making headlines. We were also given the news that China had a big jump in its diesel oil imports last month of a remarkable 49%. So, we’re being given both the news that Russia is producing less, while China is demanding more; the perfect recipe for a strong day for oil prices. Other oil producers, Mexico and Nigeria, announced that they’d temporarily shut down some of their production as well.
The current run up in oil prices has been a major reaction to the falling dollar, but it has gotten to the point now where the market is so emotional that any hint that supplies could be in question is resulting in higher prices.
Also in the news this week is Iran. While tensions in the Middle East are nothing new, any rhetoric that flows out of the oil rich region will result in spooking oil traders into driving prices higher. Yesterday, Iran put out a pretty stiff warning to Israel. Iranian deputy commander of the Iranian armed forces, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, said this day that his country was prepared to crush Israel, and that “Israel would be wiped off the global arena” should Israel make any move against it.
Tensions over Iran and its possible nuclear program have had oil traders worried for the past few years. Iran is steadfast in the fact that it is only seeking nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but not everyone (especially the United States), is so sure, and argue that Iran needs to be stopped from further pursuing any nuclear technology out of the fear that the country is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
 So far sanctions haven’t been able to convince Iran to halt its program, and just last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country was actually expanding the program. Whether or not Iran is looking to enrich uranium in order to power nuclear power plants, or to use in nuclear weapons is up to you to decide.
Iran is the world’s fourth largest oil producer, so as long as tensions are running high with the country, oil traders will continue to worry about what would happen should production from the country get disrupted.
So what does all this really mean for you? Well, the most notable impact is what you’re feeling each time you pull into your local gas station to fill up your tanks. Gasoline prices have been surging to new highs, and once again set a new high last night, at $3.39 a gallon, according to AAA. At its current price, gasoline prices are now more than 50 cents a gallon higher than they were at this time last year, and showing no signs of relief.
Analysts have predicted, on average, that we’ll be seeing prices top out around $3.60 by the middle of the high demand summer driving months, but don’t be fooled if we blow through that estimate before it is all stated and done. A lot of industry analysts are predicting that prices will actually move up as high as $4.00 a gallon before retreating later this year. Let’s hope they are wrong.
OK, to finish this up, let’s take a look at just how sharp oil prices have risen lately. Here’s a current chart to get a superior impression:
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Filed under: Bad news, Products and services, Management, Consumer experience, Employees, Sears Holdings (SHLD)
 In a story posted by The Consumerist, an eloquent and apparently intelligent gentleman referred to as Tom, relates a story of turmoil which he has experienced with a Sears Card buy he made at Sears Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD). The story goes like this:
Tom says that he purchased a TV from a Sears store. It was a deeply discounted model, at a price he couldn’t refuse. Tom apparently paid for his purchase with his Sears Card and then went out of town. Upon return from his trip, Tom called Sears to see when his new TV would be delivered. It wasn’t available. He would have to wait. Another week passed and Tom contacted his Sears retailer again. They still had no television to deliver to him, so after a terse verbal tug-o-war with the manager, Tom was offered an alternate TV at a similar discount. He purchased the surrogate unit and left the store satisfied. However, Tom’s problems had only just begun.
It seems that Tom has been unable to recover the funds he paid for the television which Sears couldn’t deliver. Try as he might, the best Tom has been able to accomplish has been a serious test of his fortitude. He’s hit dead ends from one end of the Sears operation to the other. He has been able to reasonably ascertain that Sears management’s telephones don’t interlink with one another. Meanwhile, the phantom TV model remained on display in the store. Might this possibly have been in violation of consumer bait and switch laws?
Tom approached The Consumerist in search of a solution. Readers there have suggested small claims court and contacting his State Attorney General. There’s one thing for sure here, Tom has been taken for a ride. I recommend that he should do both, sue in small claims and contact his Attorney General. Not only should he get his money back, but he should be paid interest, compounded daily, at the rate charged by the card issuer for unpaid balances. After that, he should cut up his Sears Card and shop entertainment appliances at some other store.
Gary Sattler is a freelance blogger and does not knowingly hold interest in the companies mentioned in this blog post.
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Filed under: Products and services, Google (GOOG), China
 Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to dial up its efforts in the Chinese market. Having increased its position against the country’s leading search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), it is now looking to rapidly expand its presence in China’s social networking community. Although Google’s efforts in social networking really have not paid off in the U.S., that’s not the story in China.
Part reality and part competitive trap (perhaps), Google is making the world think that social networking is ripe for expansion in China. At the same time, China’s government wants to ensure all these communications are kept under control (it’s a communist country, right?), which would make one think this: how on earth can any company bring social networking to a market ruled by an iron fist when it comes to communications?
Kai Fu-Lee, the former Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) employee who defected to Google recently under intense scrutiny, indicates that the typical Chinese internet user is 25 years old — making the market perfect for increasing market awareness and share of social networking efforts. But Baidu might be used more often by kids looking for pirated audio and video content more than anything else — not for “talking and socializing with friends” as social networking is typically described. Is Google really wanting a piece of that, or is it trying to torpedo competitors? Hey, the world’s largest world wide web search company didn’t arrive where it is this day by being stupid.
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Filed under: Earnings reports, Good news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Johnson and Johnson (JNJ)
 With traders increasingly worried about the housing market and the credit crunch, health products maker Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) gave an optimistic note to Wall Street by posting a surprising growth in its first-quarter profit. The company reported better-than-expected earnings, with some help from favorable exchange rates.
For the quarter, the company said that its profit surged 40% to $3.6 billion, or $1.26 per share, helped by strong sales of many key products. These numbers are up from $2.57 billion, or 88 cents a share, reported in the same period a year earlier. Analysts, on average, expected the company to show quarterly earnings of $1.20 a share.
The health products maker posted growth of 7.7% for its first-quarter revenue, which climbed to $16.19 billion from $15.04 billion a year earlier. During the period, Johnson & Johnson benefited from the weak dollar which was a major driver for its consumer products sales. Analysts expected the company show revenue of $15.83 billion in the third quarter, according to Thomson Financial.
Despite a weak economy that has put a curb on consumer spending, J&J had a good overall 2007. The company’s new allergy drug, Zyrtec, has been a catalyst for its consumer product business sales which jumped 16 percent to $4.06 billion. Johnson & Johnson’s cost savings plans also proved effective in its fight against strong competition, offsetting low revenues from key anemia drug Procrit.
Looking ahead, the company plans to “continue to invest in growth opportunities that are critical to our future and are continuing to manage our costs,” J&J’s chief financial officer, Dominic Caruso, stated.
Johnson & Johnson’s positive earnings gave investors’ some hope amid the challenging market conditions, but it looks like investors are still concerned about the company’s domestic sales which showed small gains compared with its overseas sales which benefited from the weak U.S. currency.
Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.
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Filed under: Products and services, Wal-Mart (WMT)
 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will soon be employing a new method to track gun sales in its stores. As part of a new measure in concert with the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” group, Wal-Mart’s chief compliance officer J.P. Suarez went to D.C. with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to explain details on a new “10-point code” that will apparently thwart weapons from Wal-Mart from falling into criminal hands.
Wal-Mart will soon be video recording gun sales in its stores and then archiving the footage as part of being included in the “Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership.” In addition, the world’s largest retailer will create a computer system to notify the company of a gun bought in one of its stores is indeed used in a crime. If workers think they have the ability to get at guns from the inside, Wal-Mart will now perform screening and background checks on employees that will be handling and selling firearms in its stores.
The National Rifle Association said that these moves wouldn’t do a thing to reduce crime, calling out Bloomberg from his “bully pulpit”. Will videotaping gun buys lead to any less crimes being committed, or is this a PR move by the retailer? Hard to say, but Wal-Mart did indicate that it hopes “other retailers will join us in adopting the code.”
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Posted by: in Housing
Filed under: Bad news, Housing, Recession
 Home foreclosures in the United States rocketed 57% in March 2008 compared to a year ago, as more homeowners relinquished their homes to lenders, according to data compiled by RealtyTrac.
More than 234,000 properties were in some stage of foreclosure - - roughly 1 in 538 U.S. households, RealtyTrac announced Tuesday.
Nevada, California, and Florida had the highest foreclosure rates, while Vermont, North Dakota, and South Dakota had the lowest.
Handing back the keys
Economist Glen Langan stated Tuesday he’s not surprised that RealtyTrac indicated that the massive foreclosure increase showed that many homeowners were simply walking away from homes worth substantially less than the mortgage and deeding the home back to the lender.
“If you can’t refinance — and in many cases today with more-rigorous mortgage stipulations, you can’t — a home sale probably doesn’t make much sense,” Langan stated. “If it’s a $20,000 gap, a mortgage of $400,000 and a house value of $380,000, you probably sell, or search harder to find a lender who will refinance the note.”
“But if you hold a mortgage for $400,000 and the house is now worth $200,000 or $175,000 or even less, it makes makes very little sense to sell, so you simply hand the deed and keys back to the lender, and state ‘It’s yours,’ ” Langan stated. “And that’s what a lot of homeowners are doing now.”
However, Langan underscore that ‘handing back the keys’ is not without it downside. Doing so will still lower a borrower’s credit rating, although Langan admits “that’s probably at the bottom of concerns for many homeowners about to give up their homes.” Also, the rising foreclosures will add big amounts of inventory to an already oversupplied housing market, depressing home prices for a longer period of time.
Rising home inventories
The U.S unsold home inventory is now about 9.5-10 months, at current selling rates, depending on the home inventory methodology used, Langan said. A normal, or health housing market has about a 3-4 month supply.
The alarming increase in home foreclosures “will keep home prices depressed for at least a quarter or two,” Langan said, hurting new home construction, and a host of other lateral sectors that depending on house sales and construction.
“And that’ll delay the U.S economic recovery. Given the rate of foreclosures we’re seeing now, its hard to see the economy starting to grow in Q3,” Langan stated. “The growth engine just isn’t there right now.”
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esocid writes in with a followup to the recent discussion about the possibility that our galaxy’s central black hole could reignite. “Using NASA, Japanese, and European X-ray satellites, a team of Japanese astronomers has discovered that Sagittarius A* let loose a powerful flare three centuries before the time at which we’re observing it (i.e., 26,000 years in the past). X-ray pulses emanating from just outside the black hole take 300 years to traverse the distance between the central black hole and a big cloud known as Sagittarius B2, so the cloud responds to events that occurred 300 years earlier. ‘By observing how this cloud lit up and faded over 10 years, we could trace back the black hole’s activity 300 years ago,’ states team member Katsuji Koyama of Kyoto University. ‘The black hole was a million times brighter three centuries ago.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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NoMoreCoal writes “Salon has up a story by Joe Romm, former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, discussing a lesser-known alternative energy solution. It’s a technology that (he claims) is ready to provide zero-carbon electric power huge, fast, cheap and (most importantly) right now: solar thermal power. ‘Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there’s, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United Says. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have big resources.’” Interesting stuff, even if he does mention the Archimedes Death Ray.
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Posted by: in Politics News
Pioneer Woman writes “Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party’s youth wing, stated all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December. The decision appeared aimed at countering heavy losses that the ruling National Front coalition suffered in last month’s general elections. In a country where mainstream media is tightly controlled by the government they underestimated the power of online campaigning. In the past, celebration politicians have said bloggers spread lies and rumors but now even youth deputy Khairy Jamaluddin — who once compared bloggers to monkeys living by the law of the jungle — has a blog.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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